Must Be True Questions

[Zarie Blackburn]

We recently received the following question from a student. We will shortly post a response below.

"What is a good method for attacking must be true questions? Should I focus on the conclusion or the answer should serve as my conclusion? I'm having a lot of trouble with these questions."

[Adam Tyson]

Thanks for the question! First things first, and that is that in nearly every Must Be True question there will be no conclusion at all. Instead, you will only be looking at a fact set, a series of statements that you are expected to simply accept as true and which do not purport to support or follow from each other. In fact, in many cases you should be able to anticipate a Must Be True question stem simply because there was no argument in the stimulus (although the same could be said of Cannot Be True and Resolve the Paradox questions).

Your prephrase to a Must Be True question should be something that follows from the facts given in the stimulus, and it should not require any outside or "new" information in order to be correct (although it may CONTAIN new information - it just cannot RELY on that new info). Don't make any assumptions of your own, and beware of answers that are too extreme to be proven by the facts in the stimulus. For example, if you have a series of statements about things that are probable, you could not support an answer that indicates something is certain, but you could support that something is possible.

Think of the answer to a Must Be True question (and it's close relation, a Most Strongly Supported question) as being something that the information in the stimulus either proves or at least strengthens. It's up to you to draw a conclusion, to make an inference based on the statements given. Only once you have made that inference yourself should you move on to sorting the answer choices into losers (answers that are clearly wrong because the stimulus does not support them) and contenders (everything else), ideally looking for something that either matches your prephrase or at least accomplishes the same thing. Don't wait for an answer choice to suggest itself to you! The authors are too good at making bad answers look good and good answers look bad for you to trust that the right answer will be clear on first look. Take a proactive approach and determine for yourself what the answer should say, or contain, or DO, and then look for an answer that says or contains or does just that.

In short: read the stimulus, notice that there is no argument but just facts, read the stem to be sure you know what your task is, determine for yourself what the answer should look like ("prephrase" the answer), sort the answer choices into losers and contenders, and then pick the best one from among the contenders.

Good luck!